Digital Signage Content-101

Digital signage content is one of the most important parts of any digital signage network, this is the part that contains the marketing or branding message alternatively it can provide information – a viewer will not look up and comment on the screen size or brand, they are interested in the vivid colours used and the message displayed.

Anyone that is familiar with computers will understand and know about computer file sizes, if not these are measured in kilobytes, megabytes and terabytes and vary depending on the type of file format used. For example text files are considerably smaller than say a JPEG (image) file; an image file is smaller than an MPEG (video file) these can measure from several hundred megabytes in size depending upon the length of the video.

Multimedia formats for graphics, audio and video probably represent the largest files on our individual computers, now if you were to put lots of multimedia formats (that are essential for any signage solution to be noticed) this will slow down the digital messaging network for sure.

When a new message is created, multimedia rich formats are used and added to an already overloaded network can result in choking the networks bandwidth. But there is a solution and it is the CG approach.

What is the CG approach?
This has been in broadcasting for years; it stands for Character Generator. This is a device that allows graphic designers to overlay text or graphics on top of existing video streams, it simplifies vide production enormously.

Without CG, the video production process is very laborious, as you can see in the example below.

Without CG – OMG!
If you were to create a video without a character generator you would have to create your own graphics and text from the beginning, synchronise it with the video and then record a video with the added images and text. This process would have to be repeated every time a video is created. This takes tonnes of manpower, resources and possibly be a waste of time. But this is how most companies choose to use digital signage.

With CG – Phew!
Technology is supposed to make our lives easier – yes? Well CG can help in this areas, as some dynamic signage software comes with pre-installed with MPEG video backgrounds, these can be integrated by just add a message and use the CG approach to overlap the text to the video, making it extremely efficient and a good time saver.

The end result is a message that is delivered with a much smaller file size, freeing up the networks bandwidth.